One of the things I find fascinating—and disturbing—about photos from the Civil Rights era are the faces in the crowd. Consider this picture of a mob beating Freedom Riders in Birmingham in 1961. Here are the faces of regular Americans—our neighbors, friends, sons, and grandpas—all caught on the wrong side of history, leaving a legacy of ugliness.

Sadly, an incident this past week in Washington D.C. shows things haven’t changed much. History’s lens caught private school students from Kentucky harassing Native American Nathan Phillips. “The looks in these young men’s faces,” said Phillips, “I mean, if you go back and look at the lynchings that was done (in America)…and you’d see the faces on the people…the glee and the hatred in their faces. That’s what these faces looked like.”

Two pictures of the same thing, sixty years apart: faces in the crowd caught on the wrong side of history. It shows we have a lot more work to do.

Character, kindness, justice, and tolerance should be taught year-round—not just during Black History Month—but here are a number of great reader’s theater scripts and classroom plays to make February especially meaningful. When combined with your excellent teaching, perhaps more of our students will be caught on the right side of history, leaving behind a legacy of courage and kindness.

All these plays are available on my TeachersPayTeachers storefront. They typically come with comprehension activities developed around the CCSs, and they include reproduction and performance rights. Not sure where to begin? Try downloading my free MLK Preview Pack.

Celebrate Martin Luther King’s legacy and teach his core values with any of a number of plays available on my storefront at TpT. “Martin’s Big Dream,” which is about MLK’s childhood, is one of the most highly-regarded plays ever to appear in Scholastic’s Storyworks magazine. “In the Jailhouse” offers a unique perspective on the events in Montgomery, “Gonna Let it Shine” covers the Selma march, and “We Shall Overcome”—my most popular civil rights play—depicts the Birmingham Children’s Crusade. But allow me to add a new one to the fold. Though not specifically about MLK, “A Simple Act of Courage” will give your students unique insights into everything Dr. King stood for.

Ruby Bridges was headline news in 1960 as she naively trudged into the all-white William Frantz School. Her compelling story, that of a first grader—a mere first grader!—integrating New Orleans Public Schools is indelible. Famed American author John Steinbeck wrote about it. Norman Rockwell painted it. And Ruby herself, nearly forty years later, revisited it in her stunning book, Through My Eyes. Ruby’s book is likely in your school library if not on your classroom bookshelf. By pairing it with this lovely reader’s theater script, you’ll have MLK curriculum that’ll stay with your students for years to come.

All of my MLK plays are emotional retellings based on carefully-researched real events. Your students will enjoy enacting them on stage or simply reading them in class, and the comprehension activities and support material will ensure your kids will meet the standards, too.

That last week before Christmas vacation can be a real doozy. While thoughts of sugar plums may not derail that lesson you’ve been planning on verb gerunds, knowing there are new gaming systems, cell phones, and hoverboards under the tree certainly will. There’s no doubt about it: this time of year the kids are all a twitter, prompting many a teacher to set aside serious content in favor of coloring pages featuring Rudolph, Frosty, or an occasional dreidel. But it needn’t be so. This is a great time to stage a play! In so doing your students will get some quality fluency practice, partake in some interesting literary discussions, and, depending on how far you want to take it, occupy themselves with meaningful work creating sets, props, and costumes. Here are four classroom reader’s theater scripts ideal for the next few weeks.

“Ebenezer Scrooge” is a traditional retelling of the Dickens classic. This age-appropriate version from the Dec. 1998 issue of Storyworks is available on TeachersPayTeachers only during December. It includes roles for fourteen students (though some can be doubled-up) as well as two or more non-speaking extras. I also have a version of this play in which Scrooge is cast as a woman, available in my book, Read Aloud Plays: Classic Short Stories.

Long before Scrooge there was “Gabriel Grub,” the gravedigger. From Dickens’ The Pickwick Papers, this eerie adaption is a perfect complement to “A Christmas Carol” or a wonderful stand-alone Gothic holiday play. Gabriel is the sullen sexton who scowls at holiday mirth. He goes to the churchyard on Christmas eve to dig a grave and there encounters the Goblin King and a chorus of imps. It’s Dickens’ at his best! It includes enough parts for an entire class, or double up roles and stage it with as few as twelve. (Warning: it may be too scary for younger students, so use it with grades 5 and up).

The Gift of the Magi is the endearing story of a husband and wife who pawn their most precious things in order to buy gifts for one another, only to discover the gifts are no longer needed. This O.Henry classic originally appeared in the Nov./Dec. 2001 issue of Storyworks, and is currently available for immediate download through Scholastic Teacher Express. Students will likely be familiar with the plot because it’s been so readily adapted everywhere from Sesame Street to the Simpson’s to Walt Disney. Parts for nine students in grades 4 through 8.

Maupassant the Cat and Flaubert the Mouse tell the exasperating tale of the discontented Matilda Loisel in Guy deMaupassant’s 1884 classic, “The Necklace.” Matilda is a young French woman who takes her happiness for granted and consequently trades it all for a string of false pearls. Students consistently rank this among their favorite plays to perform. Originally published in the Nov./Dec, 2002 issue of Storyworks, it includes parts for eight actors (and numerous non-speaking extras). It isn’t specifically a holiday play, but could be made so simply by referring to “The Ambassador’s Ball” as “The Ambassador’s Christmas Ball.” It’s appropriate for students in grades 4 through 8 and is currently available in Read Aloud Plays: Classic Short Stories on Scholastic Teacher Express.

I’ve just released a new reader’s theater play script. I put it together early in the summer but have waited until now to release it because, like nearly all my plays, I wanted to try it out with my own students before offering it to you. By doing so, not only do I catch (nearly) all my typos, I’m also able to figure out which lines work and which lines need a bit more pep. It amazes me how adding an innocuous word such as “always” bolsters an otherwise flat one-liner (in this case, spoken by an elephant to a hippo).

“How the Elephant Got Its Trunk” is my new play. It’s based on Rudyard Kipling’s oft-adapted “Elephant’s Child” from his 1902 work, Just So Stories. Yes, there are a lot of adaptions of this one out there, but I think you’ll find mine to be unique. First of all, Kipling’s original story is about an elephant that get’s spanked by all his relatives. I’m not intending to make any political statements, but there’s little question these days that spanking isn’t considered school-appropriate. Consequently, I’ve come up with a clever way to re-work the story without altering its mojo. It’s a Just So adaption just right for class!

My script also encourages students to experiment with dialect. I’ve found that any time I can get kids talking like a southern belle, a Bronx street urchin, or a Russian cowpoke (see my Talk Like A Russian Day post), the stories come to life in profound ways. We also have a lot more laughs. “Elephant’s Child” sets the tone with Swahili storytellers, then tosses in a baboon with a British accent, a snake with a lisp, a hip-hop jivin’ giraffe, and others. If your kids like it as much as my students do, I think you’ll be pleased.

I’ve also included two versions in one package: my original, which is geared toward 5th through 8th graders, and a simplified “Youngers Version” for 3rd through 5th. My fifth graders are using the upper version and doing fine with it. It includes leveled comprehension activities based on Common Core standards. Older students can pair the play with the original short story–available all over the Web. You can also enact it alongside another of my Kipling plays, “Rikki Tikki Tavi,” which is available through Scholastic.

If you’re unfamiliar with Hine’s work, be sure to read the Post article. In the late 1900’s, because there were no labor laws to prevent it or unions to defend against it, companies quit hiring adult men and instead hired children at a fraction of the cost. Both unemployment and illiteracy skyrocketed. Hine brought the practice “into the light” by surreptitiously gaining access to mines, factories, and farms and photographing children working long hours under deplorable conditions. He often convinced floor bosses that he was merely there to take pictures of the company’s “impressive” machinery. The children, he’d tell them, needed to be in the picture to provide a sense of scale. He was often threatened with violence, but his effort eventually paid off for the American worker, leading to labor laws that still exist today. Hine, however, died impoverished and with little fanfare.

My play, “Stolen Childhoods,” has been published in both Storyworks and Scope magazines. It follows Hine as he finagles his way into factories, and a trio of endangered siblings, whom he eventually photographs. Hine’s photographs are poignant and powerful; I’m hopeful I’ve captured a bit of that poignancy in my play. You can preview it or purchase it on my storefront at TeachersPayTeachers.

Allow me to conclude with a politically-charged statement: unions today have been vilified by politicians and corporate interests, but given their role defending the American worker, it seems more important than ever that young people know the history behind organized labor. The Post article, my play, and certainly the work of Lewis Hine go a long way in teaching that history.

Technology has it benefits, but sometimes I wish I could go back to teaching the way it was when there were blackboards, 35 mm film projectors, and life-threatening playground structures. Ah, simpler times! Wasn’t all this new-fangled technology supposed to make things simpler? You’re probably thinking that in many ways it has and in other ways it’s made thing massively over-complicated. Whatever the case, it reminds me that all the products I post on TpT, I’ve created out of a need for materials that are a.) kid-centric (I want my students to love being in my class); b.) easy-to-use (I don’t want to wade through a massive teacher’s edition to figure out how to do something); and c.) sustainable (I want regular routines that won’t keep me up at night). Simple. With all that in mind, here are a few items I think you’ll want for Back-to-School.

Fact Car Rally Race. Mastery of the math facts is the foundation of all things math, so a program that keeps kids focused on truly memorizing their tables is essential. In Fact Car Rally, students create their race cars during the first week of school and spend the year progressing around the race route as they pass fact quizzes—addition and subtraction for youngers, multiplication and division for olders. “Way better than Rocket Math,” say kids and teachers alike!

Super Sentences & Perfect Paragraphs. No need for expensive textbooks, software licenses, or complicated teacher editions! Everything you need for an entire year’s writing program is right here in one, easy-to-use and engaging package. Try out a free sample by clicking here, and if you like it, snag Volume 1 from Scholastic Teaching Resources (it’s cheap), or my new Vol. 2, which will be available on TpT soon.

EZSubPlans. Be prepared for that emergency absence by prepping your plans now, before you’re desperate. It’s easy with EZSubPlans—just click, print, and relax! There are sets for 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th grades, but they’re largely interchangeable. In fact, I use all four sets at fifth grade, meaning I’m already covered for up to eight emergency absences. Eight!

Folks have been pestering me about why I haven’t released any new plays lately. Like you, I’m a practicing classroom teacher, and when the school year came to an end I wasn’t much more than a mass of vibrating pulp in the corner of my room. Think mealworm pupa. That’s how exhausted I was.

Don’t get me wrong. I had a wonderful class, exciting year-end activities, and a supportive admin. It was one of my best years ever! Yet there I lay for a full week, drooling. Was I burned out, or merely lightly chewed and regurgitated? Upon finally waking from my stupor I stumbled upon a nifty post about teacher stress. It appears on a UK blog called TeacherToolkit. It quotes Dr. Jenny Grant Rankin from her book First Aid for Teacher Burnout: How You Can Find Peace and Success. To paraphrase Dr. Rankin, there are six big factors that lead to burnout. In evaluating my own stress, I’ve assigned points from 0 to 5 for each.

1.) The overwhelming workload. The job is never-ending. There is always something more to be done and no matter how hard you work, something important gets left behind. Every day. Every week. Every year. I’m just hopeful I didn’t leave one of my fifth graders behind at outdoor ed. Stress points: 5, though I admit a lot of my work tasks were self-imposed. Because teachers tend to be highly motivated, I suspect that’s true for many of you.

2.) The unrelenting school day. Dr. Rankin mentions “poorly vetted resources” here. I take that to mean lousy textbook programs your school district paid thousands of dollars to shove at you. The backrooms and closets of my school building are crammed with them. My best advice comes from a veteran teacher way back in 1998. “Sure I’m using the adopted curriculum. It’s right there holding up that shelf.” These days I’m fortunate because I’m allowed—even encouraged—to use alternative resources such as Storyworks magazine, all my reader’s theater scripts, and programs such as Super Sentences & Perfect Paragraphs. For this last bit, I’ve recently re-acquired the rights from Scholastic and plan on offering a variety of revamped versions of it on TpT. But I think the unrelenting stress to which Dr. Rankin refers is really about being “on” all day, about the constant stimulation, about being pulled in too many directions, about not having enough time to go to the bathroom, let alone plan your next unit. I know I was feeling that stress as the year concluded. Stress points: 3.

3.) Oh the tedium! See item #2 and make a ditto of my snarky comments about textbooks, but add in a few more about commercial curricula, and then consider trying out some of my plays and programs. Stress points: 0. Academic freedom is bliss.

4.) Student behavior (or lack thereof). They’re calling it “Disrupted Learning,” or something like that, and it seems to be getting worse. Some experts are suggesting video game addiction is behind it, and if so, one wonders if schools contributing to it with all the additional screen time given to computer-based learning. Stress points: 3. I had a particularly lovely group this year, but behavior management is always a stress.

5.) The pointy-haired man (see Dilbert, Chapter 1). A bad administrator can destroy the school climate in a hurry. I’m fortunate to have one that facilitates a healthful culture. Stress points: 0. I’m lucky.

6.) Disrespect (from parents, the media, Betsy DeVos, et al.). In most years I’d give this a 5, but I feel like the pendulum is swinging back in our favor. From my distant view, it seemed like the public was largely supportive of educators during the strikes in Oklahoma, Arizona, and elsewhere. Although politicians continue to tout test scores and privatization, because the public is starting to acknowledge our stress, I’m only going to assign this 3 points.

So what’s my total: 14 (out of 30 possible). I guess I’m only 47% burned out. Not too shabby given the nature of the job, but I think I’m going to check out Dr. Rankin’s book anyway. If your score is up there, perhaps you should too. Until then, allow me to close with three push-backs against the stress:

X. Tell it like it is. When people make sometime-snarky comments about you being on “vacation,” boldly remind them that this is summer furlough, NOT summer vacation. Like most teachers, you’ve been laid off for a couple months. You’re not getting paid. You’re on a 200 day (+/-) contract and it ended. In fact, you probably only get one paid vacation day off per year, and unlike most professionals, you DON’T get to take it whenever you want. That’s why you’ve never seen the fall colors of New England, the Pendleton Round-up, or a decent price on a plane ticket. (I really don’t think saying this will help combat stress, but in the long run it might lower your stress score for item #6.)

Y. Get involved in your union. I’m not a fan of all my union’s policies and positions, but the NEA and AFT are the only organizations fighting against privatization of public schools. Your state-level union is probably the only organization protecting your retirement or working for adequate school funding. And your local association is probably the only thing standing between you and working conditions guaranteed to burn you out.

Z. Enjoy your summer furlough. Imagine how high your stress score would be if you didn’t have the summer months to recover! Me, I’d still be drooling in the corner. Instead, I’m busy working on some new reader’s theater products…which I hope you’ll come back and check out this fall.